This talk presents recent precision measurements of key properties of the Standard Model and the Higgs boson at the LHC.
The description of physical systems depends on the resolution at which they are probed. Since the discovery of quarks, a central question in nuclear physics has been how to connect the traditional, low-resolution picture of nuclei in terms of protons and neutrons (nucleons) with the high-resolution description involving quarks and gluons. At the intersection of these two regimes are...
The ALPHA experiment at CERN’s Antiproton Decelerator is devoted to the study of the spectroscopic properties and gravitational behavior of anti-hydrogen. The comparison of these properties with those of hydrogen, which are known to great precision, may constitute a test of CPT, Lorentz Invariance, and the Weak Equivalence Principle.
To produce and confine antihydrogen, ALPHA relies on...
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) collaboration presents cosmological constraints and data products from its sixth data release, DR6. Including data from 2017 - 2022 (the telescope decommissioning), DR6 observed 40% of the microwave sky to five times the angular resolution and three times the depth in polarization as the Planck satellite. The improved cosmic microwave background (CMB)...
Understanding the nature of dark matter is one of the biggest challenges in physics today. Over the past two decades, experiments searching for ~100 GeV dark matter particles have made incredible progress, gaining over five orders of magnitude in sensitivity, or doubling in sensitivity every 1.25 years. These experiments have grown from the the size of a small coffee cup to multi-ton detectors...
Modern first-principles (or “ab initio”) many-body simulations make it possible to compute the structure of atomic nuclei from scratch, starting from effective field theories of quantum chomodynamics. Recent developments have extended the reach of these simulations to the heaviest stable isotopes, to higher precision, and to new applications including many studies of fundamental interactions...
At high energies, the density of gluons inside nucleons grow rapidly, leading to a dense regime where their interactions become non-linear. This phenomenon, known as gluon saturation, is a prediction of QCD and is effectively described by the Color Glass Condensate framework. In this talk, we will explore how saturation manifests in high-energy processes such as deep inelastic scattering,...
Long-baseline experiments measure neutrino oscillations in accelerator produced muon neutrino and antineutrino beams to explore open questions about neutrino masses and mixing. These experiments continue to provide a rich environment to explore fundamental physics, specifically for determining the neutrino mass ordering, searching for the potential charge-parity violation in the lepton sector,...
We discuss the implementation of general mass variable flavor number (GMVFN) schemes (such as ACOT or S-ACOT) for the treatment of heavy-quark mass effects in global PDF analyses at higher orders in QCD in terms of subtraction and residual PDFs. We present the application to Z+heavy flavor production and other cases of interest for precision phenomenology at hadron colliders.
We discuss model-independent contributions to the electron EDM, focusing on those contributions emerging from a heavy scalar sector linearly realized. To provide a concrete new-physics realization, we investigate the aligned 2HDM in the decoupling limit. We point out that logarithmically-enhanced contributions generated from Barr-Zee diagrams with a fermion loop are present in the aligned...
A next generation cryogenic neutron electric dipole moment (EDM) experiment based on an idea to combine ultracold neutron (UCN) production in superfluid 4He with real-time measurement of the precession frequency using the capture of polarized neutrons on polarized 3He. A previous version of the experiment utilizing the Fundamental Neutron Physics Beamline (FnPB) at the Oak Ridge National...
Despite decades of research the gluon remains the least known object in QCD. This is dictated by both theoretical and experimental challenges due to the non-trivial dynamics generated by gluons. Understanding of this dynamics is one of the most important problems in QCD. One of the key manifestations of this dynamics is the gluon saturation associated with the non-linear effects in the gluon...
In ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions (UPCs), vector meson photoproduction, e.g. $\rho^{0}$ and $J/\psi$, has been considered one of the most sensitive probes for studying the gluonic structure in heavy nuclei. The linear polarization of the photons involved enables detailed imaging of the nucleus through spin interference effects. Recently, extensive efforts by the STAR experiment at RHIC...
I will give a theory overview talk about lepton flavor violation and discuss the Effective Field Theory approach.
NOvA, located at Fermilab, is a long-baseline accelerator-based neutrino experiment designed to study electron (anti)neutrino appearance and muon (anti)neutrino disappearance. The experiment employs two liquid scintillator detectors separated by 809 km: an underground Near Detector placed 1 km from the beam source to analyze the initial beam, and a Far Detector located in Minnesota placed on...
Ultracold neutrons (UCNs) are an ideal tool to measure the fundamental properties of neutrons, like their electric dipole moment (EDM). A non-zero neutron EDM would be an indication of CP violation beyond the Standard Model and provide a possible explanation of the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. However, these searches are limited by the number of UCNs that are delivered...
The Backward Hadronic Calorimeter (nHCal, negative-pseudo-rapidity HCal) is a tail catcher sampling calorimeter under development for the Electron-Proton/Ion Collider (ePIC) detector, the first to be built at the Electron Ion Collider. Its purpose is to enhance measurements of diffractive production of vector mesons and dijets in $e+p$ and $e+A$ collisions. These processes probe the partonic...
Measuring parton distribution functions (PDFs) in the valence region at high Bjorken-x is one pillar of the experimental program of Jefferson Lab at 12 GeV. In this talk, I will review the status of our knowledge of polarized and unpolarized nucleon structure functions at very high x. I will especially focus on the recent “BONuS12” experiment with CLAS12 at Jefferson lab to measure the...
The Mu2e experiment at Fermilab aims to observe
neutrinoless muon to electron conversion in the presence of an Al nucleus ($\mu^{-}$Al \rightarrow e$^{-}$Al). The signal is a monochromatic conversion electron of energy 104.97\,MeV. This process is an example of the charged lepton flavor violation (CLFV) which is highly suppressed in the Standard Model (SM) and lies far beyond the reach of...
T2K is a neutrino experiment in Japan that measures neutrino and antineutrino
oscillations using a baseline of 295 km, from the near detector "ND280" at
J-PARC, to the far detector "Super-Kamiokande" (SuperK) in Kamioka. ND280
measures the properties of the neutrino beam prior to oscillations, while
SuperK measures the beam after oscillations. In this talk, the most recent
results of...
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is designed to perform precision measurements of neutrino oscillations and to search for physics beyond the Standard Model. One of the primary scientific goals of the experiment is the determination of the CP-violating phase in the neutrino sector with high precision. As DUNE moves toward its first physics results, a comprehensive understanding...
Mu2e experiment at Fermilab will search for the process of neutrino-less $\mu^- \to e^-$ conversion on Al. The signature of this process is a monocromatic electron with the energy of 104.97 MeV. The systematic uncertainty on the reconstructed electron momentum, $\sigma_P$, is required to be $\le$ 100 keV/c. For that, the momentum scale of the experiment has to be known with the relative...
The Belle and Belle~II experiments have collected a 1.1 ab$^{-1}$ sample
of $e^+ e^-\to B\bar{B}$ collisions at a centre-of-mass energy
corresponding to the $\Upsilon(4S)$ resonance. These data allow measurements of $CP\!$ violation and the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements in $B$-meson decay. In particular, we measure the $CP$-violating phase $\phi_1/\alpha$ and...
The calorimetric Proton Detector GAseous Detector with GErmanium Tagging (GADGET) detection system has been upgraded to operate as a Time Projection Chamber (TPC) to detect low energy β-delayed single- and multi-particle emission of interest to nuclear astrophysics. The upgrade, known as GADGET II, uses micro pattern gaseous amplifier detector technology and will be surrounded by an array of...
Femtoscopy—using quantum correlations between particles to study the space-time structure of heavy-ion collisions—remains one of the most sensitive tools for understanding the dynamics of the quark-gluon plasma. Even after years of careful measurements, traditional femtoscopy with pions and kaons continues to reveal unexpected features: subtle distortions caused by residual Coulomb effects...
The PICO collaboration operates bubble chambers to search for WIMP dark matter, leveraging the excellent gamma rejection and long live fractions enabled by operating at a lower degree of superheat than the bubble chambers of the 1960s. This advancement allows for significantly improved background rejection while maintaining sensitivity to nuclear recoils. Located at the SNOLAB underground...
SNO+ is a liquid scintillator experiment preparing to search for the lepton-flavor-violating process of neutrinoless double beta decay using more than one tonne of $^{130}$Te. With about 780 tonnes of highly-radiopure scintillator located 2 km underground in Ontario, Canada, SNO+ is also able to study neutrinos from a number of unique sources and interactions. This talk will report on the...
The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) collaboration is developing liquid-noble bubble chambers sensitive to sub-keV nuclear recoils. These detectors extend the excellent electron-recoil insensitivity inherent in bubble chambers with the additional ability to reconstruct energy based on the scintillation signal for further background reduction. The targeted nuclear recoil threshold of 100 eV...
The Laboratory for Experimental Nuclear Astrophysics (LENA) located at Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL) is a world leading facility for the direct measurement of cross sections relevant to stellar burning and nucleosynthesis. For over a decade, LENA has been using low energy, high intensity ($>$ 1 mA) proton beams to study radiative capture reactions on stable isotopes. With the...
The KamLAND Zero-Neutrino Double-Beta Decay Experiment (KamLAND-Zen) located in Kamioka Observatory, Japan, is a radiopure liquid scintillator detector, doped with 745 kg of enriched Xenon gas. With an exposure of about 2.097 ton$\cdot$yr, KamLAND-Zen provides the most stringent limit on the effective Majorana mass to-date which has been obtained by a multivariate spectral fit in the energy...
Thanks to its eycellent vertey reconstruction and particle identification capabilities, the LHCb detector is particularly well-suited for studying the production and polarization of strange particles. Since the origin of hyperon polarization in unpolarized proton-proton and proton-nucleus collisions remains not fully understood, measurements across various collision systems and kinematic...
Some effects induced by SMEFT operators at one-loop have been fully computed, in particular, the renormalization of divergences by physical operators in single insertions of dimension-six operators. Important non-logarithmically enhanced contributions remain to be calculated. We discuss dimensional regularization in the Breitenlohner-Maison ‘t Hooft-Veltman scheme. The goal here consists of...
Liquid argon (LAr) scintillator-based detectors are used to search for WIMP dark matter by looking for light emission from WIMP-nucleon interactions in the target volume. The DEAP-3600 LAr dark matter detector has operated since 2016 at SNOLAB in Sudbury, Canada, and has previously contained 3.3 tonnes of LAr scintillator target. It has a background rate below one event per tonne-year, and set...
Reliable $(\alpha,n)$, $(\alpha,p)$, and $(p,\alpha)$ cross sections and reaction rates are critical to modeling nucleosynthesis in novae, X-ray bursts, and neutrino-driven winds, yet direct measurements at astrophysically relevant energies remain limited. \par
The Multi-Sampling Ionization Chamber (MUSIC) active-target detector is designed for precise measurements of ionization energy loss...
The Large Enriched Germanium Experiment for Neutrinoless bb Decay (LEGEND) aims to search for neutrinoless double beta decay (0vbb) with a half-life sensitivity in the ${^{76}}$Ge isotope above T${_{1/2}}$ = 10${^{28}}$ years. The first phase, LEGEND-200, is currently operating and taking data with ~130 kg of high-purity enriched germanium detectors immersed in liquid argon, with an expected...
Chiral matter exhibits unique properties owing to the chiral anomaly. These properties can be observed by studying the propagation and radiation of fast-moving charged particles within the matter. We demonstrate how the chiral anomaly imparts distinctive characteristics on the particle energy loss and its radiation spectrum. Consequently, we argue that quantum tomography emerges as a potent...
We describe several novel machine learning techniques to improve CMS searches and measurements. These include state-of-the-art transformer models for hadronic jet classification, flow and decorrelation methods for background estimation and MC parameter reweighting, and end-to-end analysis optimization. The impact of these advances on a selection of recent CMS results will be discussed.
Neutrino flavor oscillation in compact object mergers will significantly affect the merger dynamics and the electron fraction. In particular, fast flavor instability close to the central object in neutron star merger simulations can change r-process abundance. Over the years, many approaches have been taken to include flavor oscillation during the simulation or post-processing. In this talk, I...
Neutrinoless double beta decay (0$\nu \beta \beta$) is a hypothesized lepton number violating process, the discovery of which would lead to a greater insight into the nature of neutrino mass. CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) is a bolometric search for $0\nu \beta \beta$ in $^{130}$Te. The experiment employs 988 TeO$_2$ crystals as both the possible sources and...
The total mass and distribution of dark matter within the Solar system are poorly known, albeit constraints from measurements of planetary orbits exist. We have discovered, however, that different sorts of determinations of the Sun’s gravitational quadrupole moment can combine to yield new and highly sensitive constraints on the mass distribution within Mercury’s orbit. These outcomes provide...
A greater than 5σ discrepancy in the measurement of the proton charge radius from the accepted value (0.88 fm) due to muonic hydrogen spectroscopy measurements (in 2010 and 2013) sparked the proton radius puzzle. Since then, many experiments have set out to measure the proton radius in an effort to elucidate the reason for this new disagreement. One such experiment was PRad (Proton Radius)...
The DAMIC-M (DArk Matter In CCDs at Modane) experiment employs silicon charged-coupled devices (CCDs) to search for sub-GeV dark matter particles with unprecedented sensitivity. Thanks to the sub-electron resolution and extremely low dark current of its skipper CCDs, DAMIC-M is particularly suited to probe dark matter candidates pertaining to the so-called "hidden sector." We will present the...
This contribution reports the latest result of the search for the charged lepton flavor violating decay μ+ → e+γ undertaken at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland with the MEG II experiment using the data collected in the 2021–2022 physics runs. The sensitivity of this search is 2.2 × 10−13, a factor of 2.4 better than the one with the full dataset of MEG and it was obtained in a data...
The past three decades of experimental neutrino measurements have accumulated observations of potential anomalous short-baseline flavor transformation from different sectors of varied neutrino source (proton accelerators, reactors, and intense radioactive sources) and energy (from sub-MeV to GeV scales). They serve as an intensifying experimental impetus for pursuing beyond Standard Model...
The Beryllium Electron-capture in Superconducting Tunnel junctions (BeEST) experiment is a precision search for BSM physics that measures the low-energy nuclear recoil from the EC decay of 7Be. In Phase-III, we have scaled the experiment to multipixel arrays of STJs as well as employing a range of systematics improvements on both the technical and spectral modeling aspects of the experiment. ...
The synthesis of elements in environments such as stellar interiors and the early universe proceeds through nuclear fusion. The signatures of these processes, such as neutrino fluxes and elemental abundances, depend sensitively on nuclear reaction rates. A persistent tension between observational data and theoretical predictions highlights the importance of reducing uncertainties in these...
The Selena Neutrino Experiment couples an amorphous selenium (aSe) ionization target to a complimentary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) pixel array as an imaging detector for next-generation neutrino physics. The high $Q_{\beta\beta}$ of $^{82}$Se and the excellent image-based event classification allows for a neutrinoless $\beta\beta$ decay search free from environmental backgrounds. We...
The neutron spin asymmetry, An1 , serves as a pivotal observable for exploring the spin structure of the nucleon. Recent experiments at Jefferson Lab employing polarized 3He targets have extracted An1 over an extended kinematic range into larger xB , while maintaining high statistical precision. The experiment was carried out in Hall C with up to 10.386 GeV polarized electron beams scattering...
Since the early 2000s the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) has been studied using relativistic heavy-ion collisions at both the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC). Detailed comparisons of theoretical predictions with experimental measurements have demonstrated that the QGP acts as a nearly perfect fluid with the smallest shear viscosity to entropy density ratio...
The muon’s anomalous magnetic moment is now known experimentally to a precision of 0.19 ppm from the most recent results of the Fermilab g-2 experiment. Further improvement is expected this year, as the analysis of the final 4th, 5th and 6th runs are nearing completion. On the theoretical side, the largest source of uncertainty in the 0.37 ppm determination from the muon g-2 theory initiative...
In the Jefferson Lab experiment E12-06-105 we measured the inclusive scattering from a series of light to heavy nuclei at $x > 1$ in the quasi-elastic regime. The measurement of quasi-elastic scattering from extremely high-momentum nucleons at moderate $Q^2$ but very large $x$ is a great tool to gain insight on the short-range structure and nucleon–nucleon correlations in nuclei. The...
The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR was a modular array of $^{76}$Ge-enriched detectors that searched for neutrinoless double beta decay of $^{76}$Ge. It started data taking in 2015 with 44.5 kg of detector mass and recently concluded its primary data taking period. It published its final result on neutrinoless double beta decay in 2023, setting the half-life limit for the interaction to be $>...
Deep virtual exclusive [electroproduction] scattering (DVES) is predicted to provide access to novel tomographic distributions of quarks and gluons inside nucleons, nuclei, and other hadrons. I will discuss recent progress in both virtual Compton scattering (DVCS) and deep virtual meson production on the nucleon and on nuclei, Including recent data from Jefferson Lab and COMPASS. In DVCS,...
In ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions, quarks and gluons become deconfined from hadrons, forming a state of strongly interacting QCD matter known as the quark–gluon plasma (QGP). Recent measurements of the speed of sound in QGP, derived from the multiplicity dependence of mean transverse momentum at fixed volume, offer a direct constraint on its equation of state. This talk will present...
The uncertainty in the Standard Model (SM) expectation for the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon is currently dominated by that on the hadronic vacuum polarization (HVP) contribution. Discrepancies have been observed between results for this contribution (and related “windowed” quantities) obtained on the lattice and those obtained dispersively, using experimentally measured $e^+...
Modern first-principles (or “ab initio”) many-body simulations make it possible to compute the structure of atomic nuclei from scratch, starting from effective field theories of quantum chomodynamics. Recent developments have extended the reach of these simulations to the heaviest stable isotopes, to higher precision, and to new applications including many studies of fundamental interactions...
The mechanism of quark modification in bound nucleons (EMC effect) remains unexplained forty years after its initial observation. Inclusive DIS measurements have characterized the EMC effect for a wide range of nuclei, and experimental results from Jefferson Lab indicate that there is a strong correlation between the number of nucleons bound in short-range correlated pairs (SRCs) and the...
The nEXO experiment will search for neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) using a 5-tonne liquid xenon time projection chamber filled with xenon enriched to 90% in Xe-136.The experiment has a projected half-life sensitivity beyond 10^28 years for a 10 year data taking. Observation of 0νββ would demonstrate lepton number violation and confirm the Majorana nature of neutrinos. This talk presents...
Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs) provide information of multi-dimensional partonic structure of the nucleon and have received considerable attention. To access GPDs, there have been various dedicated experimental efforts of exclusive reactions, and their results are crucial for exploring the multivariable dependence of GPDs. Using the 160 GeV muons beams provided at CERN SPS,...
We investigate how weak interactions and bulk viscosity affect oscillation modes in hot neutron stars, such as those formed after supernovae or neutron star mergers. At temperatures up to 5 MeV, weak interaction rates become fast enough to damp composition g-modes, low-frequency oscillations driven by composition gradients. We introduce the dynamic sound speed, a complex, frequency-dependent...
We present an equation of state (EOS) that covers both the hadronic sector of the phase diagram as well as the deconfined sector, where quarks and gluons are the relevant degrees of freedom. This is accomplished through a switching function that enables the transition from the van de Waals Hadron Resonance Gas model, which describes the hadronic phase, to the
Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton...
The MUonE experiment at CERN aims to determine the leading-order hadronic contribution to the muon by an innovative approach, using elastic scattering of 160 GeV muons on atomic electrons in a low-Z target. The M2 beam line at CERN provides the necessary intensity needed to reach the statistical goal in few years of data taking. The experimental challenge relies in the precise control of the...
The University of New Hampshire polarized target lab uses dynamic nuclear polarization to achieve high tensor polarization in solid deuterated target material, such as ND3 and deuterated alcohols. This system is comprised by a number of subsystems including a 1 K liquid helium refrigerator, a solid state microwave emitter, and a superconducting magnet. During periodic “cool-downs” polarization...
The Neutrino Experiment with a Xenon TPC (NEXT) searches for neutrinoless double-beta decay (0νββ) in ¹³⁶Xe using high-pressure xenon time projection chambers.
NEXT is a phased program, with the most recent ongoing experiment, NEXT-100, enriched to 90 % of ¹³⁶Xe at 13.5 bar. The experiment started taking data in winter 2024 and demonstrated an electron-drift time of ≈ 60 ms and an energy...
Two hadron production in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering is an important tool to probe nucleon structure and study hadronization. In this talk, an overview of the observables accessible with dihadron production will be given along with recent experimental results. The focus of the talk will be on recent and projected results from the CLAS12 experiment at Jefferson Lab using...
This talk will present a theorist’s perspective on the current landscape of short-baseline neutrino physics, highlighting recent experimental progress and its theoretical implications. I will examine how the latest results from the MicroBooNE experiment inform and constrain beyond-the-Standard-Model interpretations of the longstanding LSND and MiniBooNE anomalies. In addition, I will explore a...
At the energies reached in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC, a dense and strongly interacting medium is formed. During the collision, the system reaches a point of maximal compression that may cross the boundary where hadronic degrees of freedom transition into quarks and gluons. This transition modifies the initial conditions of the fireball.
In this talk, I present a simple model of higher...
Due to recently observed low-lying isomeric states in $^{136}$Cs, charged-current interactions in liquid xenon (LXe) time projection chambers (TPCs) of the form $\nu + ^{136}$Xe are expected to create time-delayed coincident signals that can be used for background rejection on the order of $10^{-9}$, enabling background-free searches. In this talk we will discuss the capabilities of nEXO, a...
We report a search for exotic axial spin-dependent interactions between neutrons and electrons, which could signal new physics beyond the Standard Model. We employ a compensated ferrimagnetic target to realize a dense ensemble of polarized electrons with a magnetization that vanishes at a specific temperature, thereby enabling a sensitive search using polarized neutron spin rotation. This...
More than a decade after the discovery of high-energy cosmic neutrino flux, signs of anisotropy have emerged in the arrival directions of high-energy neutrinos detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. NGC 1068, a nearby active galaxy, has been identified in the time-integrated search promoting active galaxies as the most prominent sources of high-energy neutrinos. Moreover, strong...
I will present the cosmological analysis from the simultaneous Bayesian estimates of gravitational-lensing potential bandpowers and unlensed cosmic microwave background (CMB) EE bandpowers using the polarization maps from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) observed in 2019/20. These observations produce the deepest high-angular-resolution CMB polarization maps at 95, 150, and 220 GHz to date,...
The recent demonstration of laser excitation of the 8 eV isomeric state of thorium-229 is a significant step towards a nuclear clock. The low excitation energy likely results from a cancellation between the contributions of the electromagnetic and strong forces. Physics beyond the Standard Model could disrupt this cancellation, highlighting nuclear clocks' sensitivity to new physics.
It is...
Neutrino self-interactions beyond the standard model have profound implications in astrophysics and cosmology. In this work, we study an uncharted scenario in which one of the three neutrino species has a mass much smaller than the temperature of the cosmic neutrino background. This results in a relativistic component that significantly broadens the absorption feature on the astrophysical...
With the last decade of imaging surveys, such as the Dark Energy Survey (DES), a joint weak lensing and clustering analysis has been established as a powerful test of the cosmological model and probe of dark energy. In this talk, I will present weak lensing cosmology results measured with the Y6 shear catalog containing more than 150 million galaxies, constituting the most powerful weak...
The discovery of high-energy cosmic neutrinos has opened a new frontier in astroparticle physics, providing a unique window into the most extreme environments in the universe. I will discuss the theoretical implications of the latest observations and the growing impacts of multimessenger approaches. I will highlight recent developments on high-energy neutrino emission from extragalactic...
The location of the conjectured QCD critical point remains one of the key open questions in the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter. While lattice QCD provides strict constraints at vanishing baryon density, the sign problem prevents direct simulations at finite chemical potential. Nevertheless, a growing body of theoretical work—spanning functional methods as well as holographic...
MicroBooNE is an 85-tonne liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) at Fermilab, positioned on the Booster Neutrino Beam and off-axis to the NuMI beam. From 2015 to 2020, it collected extensive neutrino and cosmic ray data, enabling high-statistics studies of neutrino properties in the GeV range. With excellent calorimetric and spatial resolution, MicroBooNE serves both precision neutrino...
The Eot-Wash group has been using torsion balances to test gravity and search for novel interactions for many years. We are nearing the end of a new data campaign with our upgraded rotating torsion balance. I will discuss two searches with the new experimental data: one testing for sub-gravitational strength interactions between dark matter and ordinary matter, and another searching for...
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which instruments one cubic kilometer of clear glacial ice beneath the South Pole, is designed to reconstruct neutrino energies and arrival directions above 1 GeV. However, the detector is also sensitive to the few-second burst of ~10 MeV neutrinos produced in transients such as core-collapse supernovae. A core collapse in the Milky Way will produce...
CMB-S4, the next-generation ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment, will make measurements with unprecedented precision and provide fundamental new insights into cosmology and fundamental physics. Its key measurements will include the search for primordial gravitational waves, probes of the nature of dark matter and dark energy, tight constraints on light relic particles,...
High-energy cosmic rays interact in the Earth's atmosphere and produce extensive air showers (EAS) which can be measured with large detector arrays at the ground. The interpretation of these measurements relies on sophisticated models of the EAS development which represents a challenge as well as an opportunity to study quantum chromodynamics (QCD) under extreme conditions. The EAS development...
The D-measure of event-by-event net-charge fluctuations was introduced over 20 years ago as a potential signal of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) in heavy-ion collisions, where it is expected to be suppressed due to the fractional electric charges of quarks. Measurements have been performed at RHIC and LHC, but the conclusion has been elusive in the absence of quantitative calculations for both...
The ICARUS Collaboration is now entering its fifth year of continuing operations of the 760-ton liquid argon T600 detector. The T600 was overhauled at CERN after operations at the LNGS underground laboratory in Italy and moved to its present location at FNAL - as part of the Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) program - where it successfully completed its commissioning phase in June 2022. At FNAL...
Gravitational wave observations of binary neutron star mergers ahve the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the nuclear equation of state and the fundamental interactions that determine its properties. A major hurdle in obtaining this nuclear information comes from the computational cost to solve the neutron star structure equations (Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equations) alongside...
Millicharged particles (mCPs), with a fractional electric charge, appear in several extensions of the Standard Model. They have the potential to explain anomalies in particle physics and cosmology, and may even constitute a fraction of the dark matter. At accelerators, mCPs could be produced through several mechanisms such as meson decays, bremsstrahlung and Drell-Yan processes. Detecting...
Gravitational-wave multi-messenger observations harness the complementary strengths of different messengers to deepen our understanding of the Universe. With the ongoing LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing run and planned upgrades to the observatories, the increasing number of detections positions us to tackle key questions in cosmology. In this talk, I will outline the exciting opportunities that...
Observations by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory over the last decade have revealed a bright, near-isotropic high-energy neutrino background of almost entirely unknown origin, with a small number of neutrinos from identified sources: two active galaxies and the Milky Way. Understanding the origin and production mechanism of this neutrino background will require a new generation of detectors...
The study of neutron stars, dense remnants of stellar core collapse, provides a unique opportunity to explore the fundamental properties of matter under extreme conditions. In this talk I will review the status of our current understanding of the neutron star equation of state (EOS) through measurements derived from multi-messenger observations of binary neutron star mergers. Then, focusing on...
Dual phase noble element detectors have demonstrated the strong ability to detect low energy ionization signals through strong electroluminescence in the gas. This amplifies the electron signal and makes the detection of individual electrons not only possible but also highly efficient. Two target nuclei, argon and xenon, are widely used in noble liquid detectors, with each having unique...
The Short-Baseline Near Detector (SBND) is one of the Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) neutrino detectors positioned along the axis of the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) at Fermilab, and is the near detector in the Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) Program. The detector completed commissioning and began taking neutrino data in the summer of 2024. SBND is characterized by superb imaging...
The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory(LHAASO), a state-of-the-art cosmic ray detector, has promoted significant progresses in the investigation of ultra-high-energy gamma-ray sources and hadron PeVatrons. Observations from LHAASO reveal the presence of ubiquitous cosmic accelerators with energies reaching or even exceeding the PeV scale within the Milky Way, including star-forming...
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory utilizes the Cherenkov radiation emitted by charged secondary particles produced in interactions of neutrinos with ice nucleons to detect neutrino events. Of particular interest to us is the energy spectrum of astrophysical neutrinos from unresolved sources, which we refer to as the diffuse astrophysical flux.
The measurement of the diffuse neutrino spectrum...
Working in an effective field theory framework, we consider the conversion of a muon to an electron in the presence of a nucleus, mediated by Lorentz- and CPT-violating operators. A subset of these operators are uniquely constrained by this channel, and their bounds (coming from the SINDRUM II experiment) are the first reported. We also provide sensitivity estimates for upcoming searches by...
Magneto-Rotational supernovae (MR-SNe) are rare and energetic supernovae that have exceptionally high magnetic fields. They are relatively uncommon but could be important in enriching galaxies with heavy elements. These explosions have early and fast ejection of matter compared with classic core-collapse supernovae so that rapid neutron capture could take place. We simulated the beta-decay...
An accurate description of short-range physics is a significant challenge in the study of strongly interacting quantum many-body systems. In nuclear physics, large short-range correlations (SRCs) hinder the use of different numerical methods for obtaining a complete picture of nuclear systems and supporting beyond-Standard-Model searches. Nuclear SRCs have been studied extensively in the last...
The DEAP-3600 experiment, located 2 km deep underground at SNOLAB in Sudbury, Canada, is a single-phase liquid argon (LAr) detector primarily designed for the direct detection of dark matter. The detector consists of a 3.3-tonne LAr contained within a spherical acrylic vessel and instrumented with 255 high-efficiency photomultiplier tubes. Since 2019, the experiment has set the most stringent...
The Superconducting Array for Low Energy Radiation (SALER) experiment aims to search for BSM electroweak physics by precisely measuring the eV-scale recoiling nucleus following beta decay of short-lived neutron deficient nuclei. To do so, SALER couples a superconducting precision sensor array to the ReA3 beamline at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams. During beam delivery, isotopes of...
Thanks to their sub-keV energy threshold and excellent background discrimination, liquid xenon (LXe) dual-phase time projection chambers (TPCs) are the leading technology in the search for GeV-scale WIMP dark matter. However, these same properties also make them well suited not only for WIMPs, but for detecting other rare and faint phenomena, such as the coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus...
The study of Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) has undergone dramatic evolution over the last two decades, driven primarily by the unprecedented capabilities of the Pierre Auger Observatory and the Telescope Array Project. Historically hindered by low statistics and substantial uncertainties, the UHECR field once grappled with basic questions about flux cutoffs, composition, and source...
The most recent results from Super-Kamiokande are presented. Super-K is a large water Cherenkov experiment that has collected over 500 kton-years of exposure used to study atmospheric neutrino oscillation, solar neutrino mixing, search for nucleon decay, search for signatures of dark matter, and search for astrophysical neutrinos of all types including the those from supernova bursts, the...
Electric Dipole Moments, or EDMs, are a clean signature of Charge Parity, or CP violation. Measurements of EDMs in different atoms and molecules correspond to different sources of CP violation. This makes measuring multiple EDMs in different mediums important. One of the best atoms to measure is Ra-225, due to the octupole deformation in its nucleus. This gives it an enhancement factor on the...
PIONEER is a rare pion decay experiment that will run at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland. In its initial phase, the primary objective is to improve the measurement of the $\pi\rightarrow e \nu$ branching ratio: $R_{e/\mu}=\mathcal{B}(\pi\rightarrow e \nu (\gamma)) / \mathcal{B}(\pi\rightarrow \mu \nu (\gamma))$. PIONEER aims to improve on, by more than an order of magnitude,...
Short-range correlations (SRCs) in nuclei manifest as nucleon-nucleon pairs and are responsible for the high-momentum tail of the nuclear wave function. SRC pairs are predominantly proton-neutron pairs due to the influence of the tensor force. While the properties of these pairs appear to be universal, key questions remain which nucleons pair in the quantum many-body system. To explore these...
The Radar Echo Telescope (RET) is a proposed next-generation ultrahigh energy (UHE) neutrino detector. A prototype instrument, recently deployed to the polar regions, uses the in-ice cascade from a UHE cosmic ray as a proxy for a UHE neutrino, to test the detection technique in nature. This prototype, called the Radar Echo Telescope for Cosmic Rays (RET-CR), collected a full season of data in...
IceCube is a neutrino telescope built into the ice at the south pole. The detector is sensitive to "tracks" as produced by charged current interactions from muon neutrinos and "cascades" produced by other flavors and the neutral current. Due to recent machine-learning-based advances in reconstruction, the precision of the pointing and background rejection have improved significantly, and...
Nuclear Schiff moments (NSMs) present a hadronic signature of new physics through their connection to CP-symmetry violation. Such symmetry violations are needed to explain the observed baryon asymmetry of the Universe. We are investigating the application of molecular matrix methods[1] to the search for NSMs of pear-shaped nuclei in heavy polar radioactive molecules[2]. Pear-shaped nuclei...
The detection of cosmic-ray antinuclei holds the potential
to be a groundbreaking method for identifying signatures of dark
matter. The dominant background for cosmic antinuclei arises from
interactions of cosmic-ray protons with interstellar hydrogen
gas. However, prevalent (anti)nuclei formation models—the thermal and
coalescence models—are based on different underlying physics. A...
Measuring the radial density profile of the Earth by observing absorption of neutrino has been discussed more than 40 years as a unique complemental method of body-wave studies based on seismic wave measurement. In this study, we use neutrino track events arriving to the IceCube neutrino observatory at the South Pole from the northern hemisphere and compare the fluxes of atmospheric and cosmic...
The Belle and Belle~II experiments have collected a $1.4~\mathrm{ab}^{-1}$ sample of $e^+e^-$ collision data at centre-of-mass energies near the $\Upsilon(nS)$ resonances. This sample contains approximately 1.3 billion $e^+e^-\to \tau^+\tau^{-}$ events, which we use to search for lepton-flavour violating decays. We present searches for $\tau-\to \mu^-\mu^-\mu^+$, $\tau^-\to\Lambda\pi^-$, and...
The baryon asymmetry of the universe (BAU) is not sufficiently explained by the Standard Model requiring Beyond Standard Model (BSM) extensions to account for the discrepancy between the observed and predicted BAU. New sources of combined charge-parity (CP) symmetry violation are required to account for this discrepancy. Permanent electric dipole moments (EDMs) and nuclear Schiff moments...
The tritium target program at Jefferson Lab enabled a range of unique studies of the neutron, allowing for extractions of the neutron magnetic form factor and parton distributions. The comparison of the mirror nuclei 3H and 3He also allows for studies of the isospin structure in multi-nucleon configurations, specifically two- and three-nucleon short-range correlations (SRCs). JLab experiment...
Permanent electric dipole moments (EDMs) sensitively probe parity and time-reversal violation, which are closely tied to CP-violation and the cosmological baryon asymmetry. An EDM collects many different effects into a single low-energy observable, representing a different admixture of fundamental sources for each measured system. Only by combining information from many diverse experiments and...
The Fermilab Muon g-2 Collaboration has now released two measurements of the anomalous magnetic moment of the positive muon ($a_μ$). The most recent result, published in 2023, confirms the initial 2021 result while achieving significantly reduced uncertainty, owing to improved systematic controls and a fourfold increase in statistical precision. Combined data brings the world average of the...
The Simons Observatory (SO) is a cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment situated on the Chajnantor Plateau in Chile's Atacama Desert. The observatory comprises seven mm-wave telescopes operating across six frequency bands (30-280 GHz). Six 60cm Small Aperture Telescopes (SATs) focus on detecting primordial B-mode polarization signatures of cosmic inflation in two deep,...
In quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the baryon quantum number is a conserved quantity. It is traditionally assumed to be evenly distributed among valence quarks in nucleus. However, an alternative framework proposes that this number is carried by a non-perturbative, Y-shaped topology of gluons connecting to three quarks. While neither hypothesis has been conclusively verified experimentally, new...
The recent direct detection of high-energy neutrinos at the LHC has opened a new window into high-energy particle physics and highlighted the potential of neutrino physics for groundbreaking discoveries. I will give an overview of the physics potential of high-energy neutrino measurements at colliders with an emphasis on the connection between particle and astroparticle physics. I will discuss...
Tests of the Standard Model and beyond with unitarity of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa quark-mixing matrix have recently received attention in view of an apparent deficit in the first row: $|V_{ud}|^2+|V_{us}|^2+|V_{ub}|^2-1=-0.15(6)\%$. At the current precision level, the element $V_{ub}$ is too small to be relevant, so that the unitarity constraint reduces to the two-flavor Cabibbo pattern....
I will review the reach of a future 10TeV muon collider in the parameter space of fermion portal dark matter models in the freeze-in regime.
I study different fermion portal models and show that, in the freeze-in regime, their parameter space is bounded from all directions.
Different fermion portal models give rise to a host of interesting prompt or long-lived particle signals.
I will...
High-energy electrons and photons serve as remarkably clean probes of hadronic matter, providing a microscope for examining the strong nuclear force. One of the most striking phenomena of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is the formation of hadrons out of massless gluons and nearly massless quarks. This system of confined quarks and gluons exhibits the characteristic spectra of excited states,...
The first signals of jet quenching were reported in January of 2001 at the Quark Matter meeting. From the early observations of the suppression of leading hadrons, the quenching of jets has advanced into a mature and extensive field with scores of observables that address almost every aspect of a modified jet. The theory of jet quenching has also advanced from single parton formalisms to...
The Fermilab Muon g-2 experiment measures the muon's anomalous magnetic moment to a precision of less than 140 parts per billion. The value is proportional to the anomalous spin precession frequency in the presence of a uniform magnetic field, for muons contained within the g-2 storage ring. Spin precession frequency is extracted from the time distribution of the muon's decay positrons...
The KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment aims to measure the absolute mass of electron antineutrino with a sensitivity of better than $0.3~\mathrm{eV}$ at a $90\%$ confidence level (CL) by analyzing the endpoint region of the tritium $\beta$-decay spectrum. The experimental apparatus combines a high-luminosity gaseous molecular tritium source with a high-resolution electrostatic...
Recent years have seen a dramatic expansion in ideas regarding the nature of dark matter, extending beyond the weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP) paradigm. Many of these theories predict minuscule couplings between light (sub-GeV mass) dark matter and the Standard Model, which direct detection experiments can search for. In this talk we will begin by reviewing the status of current...
Charge-Coupled Devices (CCDs), particularly in their Skipper-CCD configuration, are silicon-based detectors capable of single-electron sensitivity and eV-scale energy thresholds. These properties make them promising candidates for direct detection of certain low mass dark matter candidates and coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CE$\nu$NS). A critical requirement for such...
Over the last few years, muon colliders have emerged as an exciting
option for enabling access to the 10 TeV energy scale in the post High
Luminosity LHC era in a compact and power-efficient way compared to
proton-proton alternatives. However, significant research and
development is required to address the fundamental challenge that
muons are unstable, and will decay continuously while...
The Nab experiment, currently taking data on the Fundamental Neutron Physics Beamline at the ORNL Spallation Neutron Source, uses an unpolarized neutron beam to precisely measure two of the free neutron beta decay correlation parameters to probe physics beyond the Standard Model. The electron-neutrino correlation coefficient, a, will give us access to investigate CKM unitarity, and the Fierz...
The study of the hadron spectrum from first-principles in QCD has been facilitated by performing a numerical calculation of the path integral of the theory. This technique, known as lattice QCD, has some inherent restrictions, e.g. it needs to be performed in a finite Euclidean spacetime. This restriction prevents a direct calculation of real-time dynamics like those associated with scattering...
Although neutrino oscillation experiments demonstrate that neutrinos must have mass, their mass currently remains unmeasured. The Project 8 experiment aims to directly probe the neutrino mass by measuring the shape of the tritium beta decay spectrum near its endpoint. The collaboration is pioneering the Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy (CRES) technique to measure the kinetic energy...
The sPHENIX experiment at RHIC is the newest heavy ion experiment in the world. It consists of several detector technologies such as barrel calorimeters, including hadronic calorimeters covering the mid-rapidity region for the first time at RHIC, and high-resolution streaming-capable tracking detectors. This enables precision measurements of jets and beauty-hadrons, allowing for the completion...
The Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab measures the muon magnetic moment anomaly in order to test a potential discrepancy between the experimental value and the Standard Model prediction. During the experiment, muons traveled through a 15-meter-diameter magnetic storage ring, with the magnetic moment anomaly revealed through the ratio between anomalous muon precession frequency and the strength...
The standard candles of electroweak observables can be studied through the lens of neutrino-electron scattering as a purely weak process. We project the sensitivity of a neutrino detector situated around 100 meters away in the plane of a high energy muon storage ring or muon collider with $E_\mu = 0.25, 1.5$, and $5$ TeV muon beam energies, providing a highly energetic and highly intense...
The BESIII experiment in Beijing, China uses e+e- collisions with center-of-mass energies in the 2-5 GeV region to produce and study a wide range of hadron states. The hadron spectroscopy program spans the light quark, open charm, and charmonium sectors. In this talk, I'll discuss recent highlights in both light quark spectroscopy, including studies of mesons with exotic quantum numbers and...
The primary goal of the PNab experiment is to provide a high precision value for the axial coupling constant, gA, in neutron decay through measurement of angular correlations in the decay of polarized neutrons. The precision goal for the axial coupling constant is roughly the 0.02% for PNab, about a factor of two more precise than the highest precision measurements to date. A measurement at...
The PTOLEMY experiment is designed to search for the most elusive relics of the Big Bang—the cosmic neutrino background—via neutrino capture on tritium. As a key intermediate objective, the collaboration is developing the PTOLEMY demonstrator to perform a direct measurement of the absolute neutrino mass, addressing one of the outstanding open questions in particle physics and cosmology....
Dileptons and photons, emitted throughout the evolution of the hot and dense QCD medium in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, serve as an effective probe due to their minimal strong interactions. Precise measurements of the dilepton mass continuum and the direct photon transverse momentum spectrum uniquely enable the extraction of critical medium properties, notably the temperature at various...
The Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX) is an axion haloscope located at the University of Washington in Seattle. It is the first axion haloscope to reach benchmark KSVZ and DFSZ axion models and one of the few experiments on earth that can detect QCD axions. In this talk I will outline the motivation for QCD axions as a dark matter candidate, explain how ADMX aims to detect them, and review...
The electroweak interaction in the Standard Model is described by a pure vector–axial-vector structure, though other Lorentz-invariant terms could also contribute. Recent high-precision measurements of beta decays in 8Li and 8B have imposed stringent constraints on the potential contributions from Lorentz-invariant tensor currents in weak interactions. One of the significant sources of...
JPAC has been using amplitude analyses as the basis for hadron spectroscopy. Our efforts have yielded a number of important results and discoveries. In this talk I describe the most recent results from the collaboration, particularly our efforts in understanding the production of conventional and exotic resonances, and the properties of these resonances.
The MuonEDM experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) aims to directly measure the muon's electric dipole moment (EDM), with a sensitivity better than $6\times 10^{-23} e\cdot cm$ in its final phase. Achieving a measurement greater than this sensitivity would indicate new physics, revealing a larger CP violation than the known sources in the standard model.
The experiment utilizes the...
A number of experiments using neutrino sources were conducted with the intention of examining the systematics of radiochemical solar neutrino measurements of the last century. The results differed from expectations leading to the so-called gallium anomaly. This anomaly can be stated: “The measurements of the charged-current capture rate of neutrinos on Ga-71 from strong radioactive sources...
The axion is a well-motivated dark matter candidate that can be detected by its interaction with externally applied magnetic fields. The DMRadio program searches for axions with masses below 1 $\mu$eV using large magnets, high quality factor resonators, and precision sensing techniques. In this talk, I will discuss the DMRadio program, including the commissioning progress of DMRadio-50L, the...
Neutrinoless double-beta ($0\nu\beta\beta$) decay is a hypothetical weak-interaction process in which two nucleons inside an atomic nucleus $\beta$-decay simultaneously without emitting (anti-)neutrinos. Since the $\beta$ particles are emitted without accompanying antiparticles, the process violates lepton-number conservation and requires that neutrinos are Majorana particles, hence...
Nuclear electromagnetic observables, such as electric dipole polarizabilities, provide a key link between nuclear structure and astrophysics. In fact, they strongly correlate with parameters determining the nuclear matter equation of state, while offering insight at the same time on the collective excitations of the nucleus at low energy.
Computing these observables is challenging, as they...
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a powerful probe of physics beyond the standard model (BSM). While BSM searches using the CMB have traditionally focused on the primary anisotropies imprinted at the surface of last scattering, secondary anisotropies – arising from the interaction of CMB photons with intervening large-scale structure (LSS) – can also encode subtle signatures of new...
Quarkonium serves as a powerful probe for studying the formation and properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). In heavy-ion collisions, its production is influenced by an interplay of different effects, including dissociation in the hot medium, recombination of heavy quarks within the QGP, and cold nuclear matter effects arising from the presence of the nuclear environment. Examining...
The Accelerator Neutrino Neutron Interaction Experiment (ANNIE) is a 26-ton gadolinium-doped water Cherenkov detector located on the Booster Neutrino Beam at Fermilab. Its primary goal is to measure neutron yields from neutrino-nucleus interactions as a function of lepton kinematics, thereby advancing our understanding of neutrino interactions and reducing systematic uncertainties in neutrino...
The neutron lifetime is a precision observable of the Standard Model probing the CKM matrix element |V_{ud}| and beyond the Standard Model physics. For nuclear beta decay, in the region of small electron velocity or the limit of large nuclear charge Z, a Fermi function is used to account for enhanced perturbative effects. In this talk, I will present the derivation of the quantum field...
In this talk will review the status of AI inference methods that aim to tighten measurements of fundamental physics from cosmological survey data. I will discuss the promises of these methods as well as their challenges, in particular with respect to systematic errors in simulations. I will then show our recent work on AI for squeezed limit observables, where robustness to systematics is more...
The magneto-gravitational trap at Los Alamos National Laboratory traps Ultracold Neutrons (UCN) for various holding periods. The free neutron lifetime is measured by detecting the UCN surviving beta decay at the end of each holding period in the trap. The experiment has yielded the world’s most precise neutron lifetime of 877.75 ± 0.28$_{stat}$ + 0.22 – 0.16$_{sys}$ s without the large...
Theia is a proposed large-scale neutrino detector that would use both Cherenkov and scintillation signals in order to enable a rich program of fundamental physics. The baseline design consists of a tank filled with a novel scintillator and fast, spectrally-sensitive photon detectors in order to leverage both the direction resolution of the Cherenkov signal and the remarkable energy...
Quarkonia measurements in heavy ion collisions are ideal probes of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). Their production will be suppressed due to static and dynamical dissociation in the hot and dense medium, which has been suggested as a signature of the formation of the QGP. Besides the dissociation effects, there are other mechanisms, such as the regeneration effect and the cold nuclear effects,...
Nuclear matrix elements play a crucial role in linking theory with various beyond the Standard Model (BSM) search experiments, including those related to dark matter, neutrino interactions, and β-decays. However, theoretical efforts have primarily focused on scalar and vector interactions, leaving tensor couplings comparatively underexplored due to their inherent complexity. In this talk, I...
Assessing the effect of nuclear and hadronic uncertainty on the interpretation of experimental data is of fundamental importance for electron and neutrino experiments.
Traditionally, Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of lepton-nucleus scattering have been limited to inclusive processes, and are usually limited to A<=12 systems.
I will discuss the short time approximation, a factorization...
The fundamental nature of dark matter (DM) so far eludes direct detection experiments, but it has left its imprint in the cosmic large-scale structure. Extracting this information requires accurate modelling of structure formation for different dark matter theories (e.g., axions, interacting DM), careful handling of astrophysical uncertainties and consistent observations in independent...
BL3 is a next-generation beam neutron lifetime experiment with the intent to 1) explore, cross check, and reduce all systematic uncertainties in the beam method to the 10-4 level; and 2) reduce the neutron lifetime uncertainty from the beam method to <0.3 s. The project received funding in 2022 and subsystems are now being developed and constructed. The apparatus will be integrated offline in...
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a 20 kton underground liquid scintillator detector currently under commissioning 650m underground in China. JUNO features a rich physics portfolio with neutrinos from many sources including nuclear reactors, supernovae, cosmic-ray interactions in the atmosphere, the Sun, and the Earth. The primary neutrino target consists of a 35.4 m...
Sterile neutrinos are present in multiple extensions to the Standard Model and participate in neutrino mass mechanisms, from simple type-I seesaw models to UV complete theories like left-right symmetry. In total analogy to the case of light neutrinos, the neutrinoless double β decay amplitude induced by the exchange of sterile neutrinos requires the introduction of a leading-order, short-range...
Open heavy-flavor hadrons, encompassing charm or bottom quarks, serve as crucial probes for examining the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) created in high-energy heavy-ion collisions at LHC. Owing to their large masses and early production in the collision timeline, heavy quarks traverse the medium and retain information about its evolution and transport properties.
The presentation includes...
Machine Learning Emulators have been widely applied to accelerate cosmological analyses. We develop reliable Transformer architecture models (and some other models) for CMB power spectra in the range of ell=2-5000 within LCDM model, to a precision well bounded by cosmic variance limit. Through improvement in the choice of architecture, activation functions, loss functions, pre-processing of...
Quantum computing offers a promising path forward for tackling the exponential complexity of nuclear shell-model calculations, which lie at the heart of understanding nuclear structure. As classical approaches face scaling limits, especially for mid-mass and heavy nuclei, the development of resource-efficient and noise-resilient quantum algorithms has become an important focus within nuclear...
Unique forbidden β-decays have recently emerged as powerful probes of physics beyond the Standard Model, providing increased sensitivity to exotic weak interactions and right-handed couplings, and are now the focus of growing experimental efforts in the US and internationally. In this talk, I will present our recent study revealing that radiative corrections enable unique forbidden decays at...
As all observable effects of mixed quantum states, the coherence of neutrino oscillation is expected to be lost at some stage. Up to now, due to its unique property, observed neutrinos can either be classified to be in full coherence or full decoherence. However, as the precision of neutrino oscillation experiments increases, a fully coherent description would become insufficient at some...
Testing the Standard Model (SM) prediction of unitarity of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix in principle allows us to probe beyond- the-SM physics to very high energy scales. However, making the most out of these very precise measurements requires controlling theory predictions at a similar level of accuracy. In this talk, I will focus on the SM prediction for the nuclear beta decays that...
We investigate the origin of the cosmological constant, which plays a crucial role in the accelerated expansion of the Universe. One salient and intriguing property of the cosmological constant is that the associated pressure is the negative of its energy density. By analyzing the energy-momentum tensor form factors of hadrons, we find that the QCD trace anomaly balances the pressure from...
A variety of low-energy, high-precision experiments such as atomic spectroscopy and lepton scattering are used to test the electroweak structure of light nuclei. The theory support for these experiments is often rooted in modern effective field theory (EFT) techniques. However, it is necessary to include the effects of radiative corrections at the precision relevant for many experiments, which...
Gravitational form factors (GFFs), defined through the matrix elements of the energy-momentum tensor, provide critical insights into the internal structure of nucleons and nuclei. In particular, their Fourier transforms in the Breit frame yield, among others, spatial distributions of mass, and scalar energy densities associated with both quark and gluon constituents.
I will present the recent...
The most precise measurements of the mean charge radius of the proton use muonic hydrogen spectroscopy. The significant disagreement between these measurements and earlier atomic hydrogen spectroscopy and electron-proton elastic scattering data is known as the "proton radius puzzle". More recent electronic measurements have produced a range of results, but with poor consistency, far exceeding...
The experimental observation of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CEvNS) has opened a new window on Beyond Standard Model physics. In this talk, I'll review the current state of the observational landscape, its near-term future, and the new physics scenarios that can be probed including light dark matter and BSM neutrino interactions.
The Charged Pion Polarizability (CPP) experiment at Jefferson Lab is a precision measurement of the pion electromagnetic polarizability using the GlueX detector. The electromagnetic polarizability is a fundamental property of particles that measures the rigidity of a system to deformation from electromagnetic forces. Cross sections for $\gamma \gamma \to \pi^+ \pi^-$ and the pion...
The Coherent Neutrino-Nucleus Interaction Experiment (CONNIE) uses silicon charge-coupled devices (CCDs) to search for the coherent elastic scattering of reactor antineutrinos off nuclei, and to explore new physics. CONNIE is located 30 meters from the core of the 3.8 GW Angra-2 nuclear reactor in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Between 2016 and 2020, CONNIE operated with a ~40-gram CCD detector,...
Muonium is a pure leptonic binary system consisting of a positive muon and an electron, and its level structure can be calculated with high precision. The Muonium Spectroscopy Experiment Using Microwave (MuSEUM) experiment aims to verify the quantum electromagnetic dynamics theory and determine the positive muon magnetic moment and mass by precise measurements of the ground-state hyperfine...
The deuteron, a weakly bound spin-1 nucleus, exhibits a tensor-polarized structure that provides unique access to quark and gluon distributions within light nuclear systems, distributions that cannot be simply inferred from the individual proton and neutron.
Experimental data on this tensor system remain limited, and measurements that could fully reveal the 3D structure of the deuteron are...
The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) collaboration is developing liquid noble bubble chambers as a technology for the detection of low energy (sub-keV) nuclear recoils. Identifying recoils at this energy would enable searches for light (~GeV) dark matter, as well as the observation of coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering (CEvNS) at low neutrino energy (such as from a reactor source)....
Today, physicists build massive detectors to capture the faintest recoils of nuclei colliding with neutrinos and dark matter (DM). These experiments aim to enable high-precision tests of the Standard Model and to searches for physics Beyond the Standard Model. To meaningfully interpret such searches, accurate theoretical predictions of neutrino-nucleus and DM-nucleus cross sections are needed....
This contribution presents the latest experimental results from the QUARTET collaboration on high-resolution muonic lithium spectroscopy, aiming for the precise determination of nuclear charge radii for lithium isotopes. Precise measurements of absolute nuclear charge radii are a crucial ingredient for precision QED tests and serve as ideal benchmarks for modern nuclear structure theory [1]....
Since its discovery in 2017, interest in Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus
Scattering (CENNS) has rapidly increased. The precise measurement of CENNS
energy spectrum and cross section opens the possibility of exploring physics
beyond the Standard Model and plays a crucial role in constraining the
background for next-generation dark matter experiments.
Cryogenic detectors are particularly...
I will briefly review key observational evidence constraining the sources and properties of UHECRs, and show that it points to BNS mergers as the source. The main topic of the talk is predicting the spectrum and composition of UHECRs in the BNS merger scenario, which is possible to do in unprecedented specificity thanks to the source-to-source similarity of the ejecta. I use the...
Searches for physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) remain a central focus of the LHC physics program. In this talk, I will present a selection of recent results from the ATLAS and CMS experiments that target a range of BSM scenarios, including new resonances, supersymmetry-inspired signatures, dark matter candidates, and other non-standard final states. The focus will be on analyses using...
A growing number of luminous optical transients from stellar explosions are believed to be powered by the interaction between ejected stellar material and a dense circumstellar medium. This interaction drives shock waves that can accelerate particles to multi-PeV energies, producing radiation across a broad range of wavelengths. In this talk, I will explore the connection between...
The NA62 experiment at CERN collected the world's largest dataset of charged kaon decays, leading to the most precise measurement of the branching ratio of the ultra-rare $K^+ \rightarrow \pi^+ \nu \bar\nu$ decay. In this talk NA62 reports recent results from precision measurements of kaon and pion decays, using data samples collected in 2017-2018. A sample of $K^+ \rightarrow \pi^+ \gamma...
We review the constraints on the weak mixing angle, sin2θw, that can be expected in global QCD analyses from electron scattering experiments, such as parity-violating DIS, at current and future facilities, including JLab at 22 GeV and the Electron-Ion Collider.
In this talk, I will provide an update on recent advancements in the phenomenology of Transverse Momentum Distributions (TMDs), with a particular focus on the latest work from the MAP Collaboration. TMDs play a crucial role in understanding the three-dimensional structure of hadrons and are essential for describing processes such as semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS) and...
Even with only Standard Model interactions, neutrinos play a critical role in core-collapse supernovae, cooling the proto-neutron star, setting the conditions for nucleosynthesis, and likely powering the explosion. Their effects could be immensely more profound in the presence of new physics, often poorly constrained by laboratory experiments alone. In this talk, I will discuss the effects of...
The Mitchell Institute Neutrino Experiment at Reactor (MINER), based at Texas A&M University, utilizes a unique combination of low-threshold cryogenic detectors and a MW-class TRIGA research reactor to explore physics beyond the Standard Model. Designed to detect nuclear recoils down to ~100 eV, MINER enables sensitivity to coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEνNS) from reactor...
Recent advances have enabled precise joint mass–radius measurements of isolated neutron stars through Shapiro-delay observations with NASA’s Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) detector aboard the International Space Station. Intriguingly, NICER’s first two data points suggest a surprisingly weak dependence of radius on mass, with 1.4 and 2.0 solar mass stars showing similar...
Neutrinos are crucial actors in some of the marquee targets of multimessenger astronomy. In neutron star mergers and core-collapse supernovae in particular, the production, propagation, and interactions of neutrinos are paramount. But even though these sites are two of the most carefully modeled systems in astrophysics, neutrino oscillations are yet to be reliably incorporated into the...
The COHERENT collaboration makes use of the unique source of
stopped-pion neutrinos at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Spallation
Neutron Source for a broad program of coherent elastic
neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS), inelastic neutrino-nucleus
cross-section measurements, and new physics searches. This talk will
describe COHERENT's recent measurements, status and future plans.
The MOLLER experiment has been designed to significantly expand the reach for new dynamics beyond the Standard Model of electroweak interactions. Using the high intensity, high precision electron beam at Jefferson Lab, MOLLER measure the parity-violating asymmetry in the scattering of longitudinally polarized electrons off unpolarized electrons to an overall fractional accuracy of 2.4%. This...
We present the first lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) calculation of the pion valence-quark transverse-momentum-dependent parton distribution function (TMDPDF) within the framework of large-momentum effective theory (LaMET). Using correlators fixed in the Coulomb gauge (CG), we computed the quasi-TMD beam function for a pion with a mass of 300 MeV, a fine lattice spacing of $a = 0.06$ fm...
Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) is an effective field theory that systematically describes the interactions of pions and nucleons, allowing the construction of nuclear forces. While two-body potentials provide the largest contributions to these interactions, three-nucleon (3N) forces can play an important role in systems like nuclei or neutron stars.
The current derivation of the 3N force...
A computationally efficient method for calculating the transport of neutrino flavor in simulations of supernovae or compact-object mergers is to use angular moments of the neutrino one-body reduced density matrix, i.e., 'quantum moments'. To implement this approach in a simulations we need to grapple with two fundamental issues: how to define a `closure' for the moments and how to adapt...
The Coherent CAPTAIN-Mills (CCM) experiment is a 10-ton liquid argon scintillation and Cherenkov detector located at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center. Positioned 90 degrees off-axis and 23 meters from the Lujan Facility's stopped pion source, which will provide 2.25 × 10^22 protons on target over a three-year run period. The short (290 ns) duration of proton pulses delivered to the Lujan...
The P2 experiment aims for a new determination of the weak mixing angle at a very low momentum transfer. This parity violating electron scattering experiment will be carried out at the new electron accelerator MESA in Mainz, Germany. The parity violating asymmetry of the elastic scattering of polarized electrons off of protons in a liquid hydrogen unpolarized target is of order 20 parts per...
In this talk, I will summarize our (PNDME collaboration [1]) lattice QCD calculations of the flavor diagonal charges of the nucleon using ensembles generated by the MILC collaborations. These include both connected and disconnected contributions, and the full nonperturbative calculation of the renormalization constants in the 2+1 flavor theory is used to present the final results in the...
Understanding the equation of state (EOS) of pure neutron matter is necessary for interpreting observations of neutron stars. Reliable data analyses of these observations require well-quantified uncertainties for the EOS input, propagating uncertainties from nuclear interactions to the EOS. Then, observations can, in turn, put constraints on nuclear interaction parameters. However, both...
Neutrino-neutrino interactions drive a number of flavor transformation phenomena in core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers that have been shown to impact the supernova explosion mechanism, production of heavy elements in the ejecta, and observable neutrino signatures. The most prominent of these is the Fast Flavor Instability, which can occur deep inside of these systems...
The neutrino research program in the coming decades will require improved precision. A major source of uncertainty is the interaction of neutrinos with nuclei that serve as a target of many such experiments. Broadly speaking, this interaction often depends, e.g., for Charge-Current Quasi-Elastic (CCQE) scattering, on the combination of “nucleon physics” expressed by form factors and “nuclear...
Nuclear matter equation of state (EOS) is essential for understanding the properties of supernovae explosions and neutron stars. We explore the application of In-medium Similarity Renormalization Group (IMSRG) method in nuclear matter calculations. A many-body framework is built to construct EOSs for nuclear matter with a range of proton factions using IMSRG from different nuclear interaction...
Accurately modeling neutrino flavor oscillations in global simulations of core-collapse supernovae or neutron star mergers remains a major challenge, albeit a potentially crucial one for making reliable predictions. Indeed, it is now widely recognized that flavor instabilities—in which classically computed neutrino distributions are dramatically altered when including quantum effects—are...
The NOPTREX collaboration is engaged in three distinct but related scientific activities as follows:(1) a P-odd/T-odd test in polarized neutron forward transmission in polarized 139La, (2) a P-even/T-odd test in polarized neutron transmission through tensor aligned 127I, and (3) improved (n, \gamma) spectroscopy for better determination of mean square matrix element <M^{2}> in heavy nuclei....
The $x$-dependent behavior of gluons remains important for providing insight to the structure of hadrons. In this talk, we present preliminary results for continuum limit extraction of the unpolarized gluon PDF in the proton from lattice QCD using four $N_f=2+1+1$ ensembles of maximally twisted mass fermions with clover improvement with pion mass $m_{\pi}\approx250~\mathrm{MeV}$ and lattice...
Axions or axion-like particles (ALPs) are hypothetical particles predicted by various BSM theories, which also make one of the dark matter candidates. If ALPs exist in nature, the CMB photons as they pass through galaxy clusters will convert to ALPs (of mass range $10^{-14}$ to $10^{-11}$ eV), resulting in a polarized spectral distortion in the CMB, and an astrophysics dependent non-Gaussian...
Breakthroughs in our treatment of nuclear forces constrained by QCD, the many-body problem, and AI/machine learning techniques are transforming modern nuclear theory into a true first-principles discipline. This allows us to now address some of the most exciting questions at the frontiers of nuclear structure, searches for physics beyond the standard model, and connections to nuclear...
Bhabha scattering will be one of several e+e- reactions available at the JLab fixed target, polarized e+ facility, and will arguably be the easiest to cleanly measure. Rates will be high enough to measure asymmetries with ppm level uncertainties. What physics can we then explore? Because the Higgs-electron coupling to the electron is highly suppressed by the small electron mass, the s-channel...
Astrophysical neutrinos offer a unique window into the most distant and energetic environments in the universe. With an energy scale spanning TeV—PeV, and cosmological baselines, they allow us to probe a parameter space not easily accessible to colliders. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica has been detecting a steady flux of astrophysical neutrinos — in addition to the atmospheric...
LHC experiments have essentially ruled out the existence of additional chiral fermions. Thus, new elementary fermions must be vectorlike with respect to the SM gauge interactions. LHC searches for vectorlike quarks typically focus on their mixing-induced decays into W, Z and Higgs bosons. In this talk, I will point out that vectorlike quarks may instead manifest themselves in events with 6 or...
The Fermi function F(Z,E) accounts for QED corrections to beta decays that are enhanced at either small electron velocity β or large nuclear charge Z. For precision applications, the Fermi function must be combined with other radiative corrections and with scale- and scheme-dependent hadronic matrix elements. We formulate the Fermi function as a field theory object and present a new...
As experiments searching for neutrinoless double beta decay are in the planning phase of a next generation with hopes to completely probe the inverted mass hierarchy, the need for reliable nuclear matrix elements, which govern the rate of this decay, is stronger than ever. Since a large discrepancy is found when computing this quantity with different nuclear models, a large unknown still...
The upcoming IceCube Upgrade will provide unprecedented sensitivity to dark matter particles that accumulate and annihilate in the core of the Sun. In this talk, I will present our recent study showing that the upgrade will enable tests of parameter space beyond the reach of existing direct detection experiments. This improvement applies in particular to dark matter candidates with...
Radiative corrections from nuclear structure effects are a key theoretical input to precision extractions of $V_{ud}$ from superallowed $0^{+}\hspace{-2pt}\rightarrow 0^{+}$ beta decays, and currently limit the sensitivity of CKM unitarity tests to new physics. We present a formalism to compute two-body transition densities in medium-mass nuclei using deformed coupled-cluster theory and its...
Determinations of the effective Majorana mass from the neutrinoless double beta decay half-life depend on precise calculations of nuclear matrix elements (NMEs) of decay operators. These NMEs have a leading two-body component given by long-ranged (neutrino exchange), medium-ranged (pion exchange), and short-ranged (contact) contributions. Three-nucleon operators are, in most cases, not...
The leading dark matter (DM) experiments are seeing hints of nuclear recoils from coherent scattering with solar neutrinos, and will soon enter the so-called neutrino fog.
Discrimination against this background will require detectors that can measure recoil directions to distinguish solar neutrino signals from those of Galactic DM. Of current technologies employed to detect this directional...
Proton-proton fusion (pp-fusion), in which two protons fuse to form a deuteron and emit a positron and neutrino, is a critical process in the life and death of stars and thus understanding it is essential for stellar simulations. However, due to the dominant Coulomb repulsion at energies much less than the nucleon mass like those found in the cores of stars, experimental measurements of the...
We consider a t-channel simplified model with a colored mediator and demonstrate the importance of considering non-perturbative effects for both relic density calculations and collider phenomenology. Specifically, we look at the impact of bound state formation and the Sommerfeld effect. We find that the parameter space thought to be excluded by direct detection experiments and LHC searches...
Neutrino flavor is expected to undergo fast and large oscillations due to collective effects in neutrino-dense environments, where neutrino-neutrino interactions are at play. While a quantum kinetics treatment is known to predict a smaller effect from non-forward scattering in such interactions compared to forward scattering (i.e., flavor swaps), this hierarchy has not yet been clearly...
Recent high-energy laser experiments in the United States have indicated a composite matter/antimatter hadron structure for "matter" in the Universe. The cosmological implications of this novel hadron model are profound. The model provides a persuasive explanation for both Dark Energy and Dark Matter, along with explanations for a number of other significant unexplained observations (the...
Our understanding of the origin of elements heavier than iron relies on nucleosynthesis simulations, which in turn require accurate nuclear structure input, as beta-decay strengths and half-lives, especially for nuclei near the neutron dripline. In this talk, I will present preliminary coupled-cluster calculations of beta-decay strengths for neutron-rich nickel isotopes, motivated by future...
Masses and spins of hadrons are fundamental quantities in physics; however, their origins are not understood yet and their investigations are major purposes of building electron-ion colliders in 2030's. Both of them can be investigated by generalized parton distributions (GPDs). The $t$-channel or spacelike ($s$-channel or timelike) GPDs are studied by deeply virtual Compton scattering...
The study of event-by-event transverse momentum $
Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs) are some of the most intriguing quantities in QCD because they provide a spatial tomography of nucleons and nuclei, and their moments connect several aspects of hadron structure, such as parton distribution functions, electromagnetic and gravitational form factors, orbital angular momentum, and the nucleon mass. These properties make GPDs some of the...
Structure functions of the spin-1 deuteron will be investigated experimentally from the late 2020's at various facilities such as Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, nuclotron-based ion collider facility (NICA), and electron-ion colliders. We expect that a new high-energy spin-physics field could be created by these projects. In this paper...
The nature of dark matter is one of the great open questions in physics. The General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS) experiment is an Antarctic balloon mission optimized specifically for low energy (< 0.25 GeV/n) cosmic antinuclei as uniquely low-background signatures of dark matter. In particular, the production of low-energy astrophysical antideuterons is suppressed by the low abundance of...
Long-baseline accelerator neutrino experiments rely on the neutrinos from the decays of hadrons produced in hadron-nucleus interactions. Uncertainties in the hadron production yields from these interactions dominate the neutrino flux uncertainties in these beams. This talk will highlight recent results from CERN’s SPS Heavy Ion and Neutrino Experiment (NA61/SHINE) experiment, which has...
The Hyper-Kamiokande (Hyper-K) is the third generation of underground water Cherenkov detectors in Japan. It will serve as: (1) the far detector for a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment for the upgraded, to 1.3 MW power, J-PARC muon neutrino/antineutrino beam, and (2) a detector capable of observing proton decays, atmospheric neutrinos, and neutrinos from astronomical sources....
